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Archive for May, 2010

How Many Stolen Laptops Does It Take?

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

You may or may not realize this, but one of the primary advantages of notebook and netbook computers is their portability. Being able to computer from hotel lobbies, corner coffee shops, and the random McDonald’s certainly has its advantages, but I’ll let you in on a little secret–thieves like the small size, light weight, and portability of laptops too.

Just in the past couple weeks there have been two incidents of laptops from medical centers being lost or stolen. One from the Oconee Physician Practices contained name, date of birth, gender, height and weight, blood pressure and some other medical data connected with the EKG from more than 600 patients. Another laptop from Loma Linda University Medical Center had patient’s name, medical record number, diagnosis, surgery date, and the type of procedure for more than 500 patients.

How many laptops have to be lost or stolen before IT administrators and executive management realize that data has to be proactively encrypted and protected? The investment in the right tools to do the job–like Zecurion Zserver Suite–is significantly less than the cost–financially and to the company’s reputation–from being responsible for compromising the sensitive and confidential data of customers or employees.

$6.5 Million is a Lot to Gamble

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Section 13402(e)(4) of the HITECH Act, requires that the Secretary of Health and Human Services post a list of breaches of unsecured protected health information affecting 500 or more individuals.  

Since HHS began tracking and posting these breaches in late September of 2009, there have been 77 such incidents, impacting a total of 2.4 million individuals. That is an average of more than 30,000 breached records containing personal information for each incident. A 2009 study by the Ponemon Institute found that the average cost of a data breach in the United States is $208 per compromised record, making the average cost of these 77 data breaches over $6.5 million.

Some of the data breaches were the result of physical data–forms and paperwork–being thrown into a dumpster. But, nearly 75 percent of the incidents involved unencrypted data stored on servers, backup tapes, or portable storage media.

Applying the averages–here is the bottom line: 56 out of 77 incidents could have been prevented if those organizations used Zecurion Zserver Suite to encrypt and protect data. That means that nearly 1.8 million of the 2.4 million affected individuals would not have had their personal data compromised, and that thesr organizations could have avoided a combined $364 million in costs to clean up after the breach.

The investment in proactively protecting data is significantly less than the cost of reacting to a data breach incident, and it doesn’t have the long-term negative impact to the organization’s credibility and reputation.

Cyber Advisors Joins Zecurion Advantage Partner Program

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Cyber Advisors is the latest addition to ZAPP–the Zecurion Advantage Partner Program.

Since 1997, Minnesota-based Cyber Advisors (CA) has been providing information technology, e-business services, and solutions that work and grow with their clients. Consistently ranked one of the fastest growing companies by CRN and Inc., CA takes a true 360-degree view of technology and business, applying their knowledge and expertise to build, support, and use technology that enriches their clients and enhances performance. Key practice areas include security, storage, virtualization, DR/backup, Microsoft consulting, and outsourced managed services.

“Auditing and compliance used to be issues specific to the financial and healthcare sectors, but lately they have been spilling over into other industries,” says Cyber Advisors president and CEO Shane Vinup. “There are many security products on the market, but they don’t give companies the control they need. Zecurion is the only single-bullet security solution that fits in terms of price, and allows users to work when and where they want while maintaining corporate control over the data.”

 

“We’ve been aggressive in terms of creating a security solution that blocks, controls, and encrypts sensitive information, and we’ve been equally aggressive at creating a partner program that will attract high caliber partners like Cyber Advisors,” says Zecurion CEO Alexey Raevsky. “We’re pleased that Cyber Advisors selected Zecurion to be their security partner.”

 

You can learn more about Zecurion and Cyber Advisors at the Secure360 conference today and tomorrow in St. Paul, MN.

Zlock Rewrites the Rules

Monday, May 10th, 2010

ChannelWeb’s Edward Moltzen took a detailed look at Zecurion’s Zlock and praised the product in his article titled Zecurion’s Zlock Rewrites the Rules.

Moltzen begins by explaining the issue faced by organizations “Even well-meaning and well-trained employees can put data at risk on a network, and even heightened network firewalls can’t keep all data from walking out the door. Having data on a network means it could become available for download onto DVDs, floppy drives or thumb drives. Sensitive data could even be errantly left on a printer’s hard drive or cache–allowing anyone with the know-how to steal it.”

The conclusion Moltzen arrives at after seeing Zlock in action: “That’s why we think the approach taken by emerging security vendor Zecurion makes so much sense. Zecurion’s Zlock application provides a straightforward approach to securing and managing a network’s potential open doors and breaches, and it’s an approach that it makes too much sense to ignore.”

Moltzen adds “We think Zecurion could be on the way to becoming one of the stronger players in the data security space, and the company is a strong alternative for VARs to consider when looking at solutions for small or midsize businesses or workgroups.”

Read the complete article for more from ChannelWeb. To learn more about Zlock, click here.